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03 Apr 2008 07:51 am

Another Memo

By Patrick
The AP studies the footnotes of the Yoo memo and finds evidence of another secret memo that justifies warrantless surveillance and perhaps more:

For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn't apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.[...]

"Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations," the footnote states, referring to a document titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States."

Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo is unclear. But federal documents indicate that the memo relates to the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program, or TSP.

That program intercepted phone calls and e-mails on U.S. soil, bypassing the normal legal requirement that such eavesdropping be authorized by a secret federal court. The program began after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and continued until Jan. 17, 2007, when the White House resumed seeking surveillance warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

These documents are fragments; they provide a partial view of the administration's assault on civil liberties over the last eight years. We are only now seeing documents from 2003 and learning of documents from 2001. Much is yet to be disclosed. 

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